It’s a safe bet that neither Jimmy Page nor Jack White is a fan of Guitar Hero.
During a press conference staged June 19 to promote the much-anticipated film documentary, It Might Get Loud, both six-stringers slammed the video game on a couple of fronts.
“It's depressing to have a label come and tell you that [Guitar Hero] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music,” White said.
White added that although he doesn't try to dictate “which format people should get their music in … if you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that's a little sad.”
Page agreed, chiming in with his view that Guitar Hero has little value as a learning tool.
“You think of the drum part that John Bonham did on Led Zeppelin's first track on the first album, ‘Good Times Bad Times’,” he said. “How many drummers in the world can play that part, let alone on Christmas morning?”
The guitarists’ comments came during the premiere of It Might Get Loud at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The documentary, which will be officially released Aug. 14, examines the creative forces and inspirations behind the work of White, Page and U2’s The Edge.
In keeping with his thoughts about Guitar Hero, White, at one point in the film, tells Page and The Edge: “I want it to be a struggle. Technology is the big destroyer of emotion and truth.”
As the film’s title implies, White also likes to crank the volume. In a post-press conference interview with Rollingstone.com, the guitarist said, “I need to feel it. I've gone through things where I go onstage and the sound guy at soundcheck comes over and he'll hold the decibel meter and show it to me while we're playing – and it's 127 decibels. That's not good [laughs]. And I can't even tell. If it's not right there, it feels wimpy, it feels uninspiring.”
Page concurred, telling Rollingstone.com that “especially with these valve amplifiers that we really love, it gets to the point where they suddenly start really working, and the valves start to really glow and glow, and they might even explode. That's when it's starting to get good. There is a sort of threshold where it starts kicking in.”
White’s latest band, The Dead Weather, is currently performing in London. The group will begin a North American tour on July 13 in Washington, D.C. Ironically, one of the tracks on Guitar Hero 5, which comes out Sept. 1, is the White Stripes song “Blue Orchid.”